I was perusing The Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures (1818) when I read about a planned descriptive poem of Southill, the “splendid mansion and enchanting spot” in Bedford and found my curiosity peaked.
Naturally, we today might admire houses from yesterday as romantic…but for a home to worthy of a celebratory poem in the Regency era of opulence and grand architecture…well I was definitely interested to learn more.
The mansion as was in 1818 was thought to be constructed around 1726 for George Byng (1st Viscount of Torrington) who had acquired the site (and torn down the old house) sometime in 1693. Impoverished, the Byng family sold the estate to Samuel Whitbread, a nouveau riche who had made his fortune in the 1700s as London’s largest brewery owner. Although Whitbread died a year after the purchase of Southill (part of a stable of estates he was purchasing) he had appointed architect Henry Holland to remodel the house.
Holland built a new service wing, including kitchen and laundry, to the east under Whitbread’s son. Holland also instituted a good deal of new décor but much of the park’s landscape and ornamental gardens were laid out by Lancelot Brown in 1777. These were often open to the public, but the house was very rarely accessible to any but the family.
Still in the Whitbread family, the house is reported to still contain many of the Georgian treasures from its remodel, including furniture and paintings of senior brewery employees.
Whitbread was an innovative and industrious brewery owner, employing many of the latest and greatest in technology from the Georgian era including large vats for mass production and steam power. This investment in technology had an impact on the surrounding era; Handbook for Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Huntingdonshire (1895) notes that “the family of Whitbread has done much to advance the locomotive interests of Bedfordshire.”
I was unable to locate the reported poem in works by Robert Bloomfield, but I imagine it would have been lyrical and lovely…much like the Palladian home and its sprawling landscape.
The Whitbread’s themselves were an interesting and influential family who were active in anti-slavery efforts, Parliamentary matters, and patronage of the arts. The company is still alive and well today (http://www.whitbread.co.uk) and one of the finest examples of Georgian innovation’s impact on today’s world.
